Samsara
by Empatheia
Summary: [Inuyasha x Kagome] What it truly means to come full circle.


**A/N: **This is not actually a new story. After some deliberation, I decided to split up the stories of the Arigatou Project into individual files here on FFNet. One person requested hers separate, another is not an Inuyasha story, and a third is actually meant to be a two-parter rather that one monster chapter, so I decided to divide them up. I hope this doesn't confuse anyone!

OoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooO

Thank You #1- **Teirlana Draco**

_Anime- _Inuyasha

_Pairing- _Inu/Kag

_Scenario- _Modern day, possibly slightly AU

_Lemon- _yes... my first (concrit welcome on this point)

**xoxoxoxoxoxoxox**

_**Samsara**_

**xoxoxoxoxoxoxox**

Kagome stared for a long, long time. She contemplated every possible explanation. Then she contemplated some impossible ones, too. Finally, she reluctantly concluded that she had gone completely, utterly insane.

Strangely, she was not uncomfortable with this.

It was an ordinary supermarket, far from home. She had a package of, ironically, _ramen_ in her hands.

Osaka, ten years after everything. Ten years after the broken timeline that had delivered her into _his_ arms had snapped back to true with the completion of their mission, and the well had stopped working. Naraku was dead.

So was Inuyasha. They'd gone out in a blaze of mutual destruction, fire and blood and death at the far end of desperation. And then, before she'd even had a chance to assimilate the horror of that, the powers-that-be had evidently decided that her purpose was done and stopped bending the rules for her. She'd woken up in the exact same place, five hundred years later, and staggered back to her mother's arms through a river of tears.

Time had not healed anything, only soothed her gaping wounds. She'd gone on, moved on, lived on. After a while. And now, here she was in Osaka, trying to keep living without him. She'd gotten a job filing paperwork at a local office, rented a small apartment, and owned a cat. Not Buyo, he had finally drifted too far in his dreams of fish and leftovers and forgotten how to come back. Another cat. Another life.

She remembered to eat, most of the time. That's why she was there, in the supermarket, buying ramen. To keep her body alive for a little while longer. Because that's what _he_ would have wanted.

_Oh, Inuyasha._

It was uncanny, how much the boy down the aisle looked like him. He was standing looking unseeingly at a row of tomato sauce cans, obviously waiting for her to vacate the _ramen _section.

His hair was not quite so long, and black as night, and his eyes as blue as her own. Though he wore modern clothing, dark torn jeans and a dark orange t-shirt, her mind kept trying to overlay images of something red and fireproof.

Kagome stared at the man who looked like Inuyasha and tried not to cry.

Eventually, he noticed and crinkled his brow at her. "Hey, you! What're you gawkin' at?"

She nearly lost her balance. Even his voice was the same rough rasp, sarcastic and gruff. She tried to answer him, but couldn't suck in enough breath.

"Hey! I asked you a question! You got a problem or something?"

He stalked up to her and peered right into her face. "Hey... you look kinda familiar. You lived here long?"

_Too much! s_he thought frantically. _I'm going to cry, I just know it. God, he looks just like him. The powers that be must hate me._

"No," she squeaked, "I've only been here a few months."

His eyes narrowed. "Hey, you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost," he said gruffly. "You sick or something?"

"No, I'm not sick."

"Then what's wrong?"

She struggled to find words that weren't crazy, that wouldn't make him run away and leave her again. "You just remind me of... someone I used to know. It just startled me, seeing your face. I'm sorry for staring."

He straightened and scratched his head. "I don't mind. It's not every day a guy has pretty girls staring at him in the corner store, you know."

She blushed and hung her head, her hair falling around her eyes.

"And besides, like I said, you look kinda familiar too. You sure we've never met?"

"Oh, yes. Quite sure."

"Well, in that case... nice to meet you." He bowed, gracefully. "I'm Hanataro Akio, what's your name?"

"Higurashi Kagome," she answered faintly, and bowed back. _I'm dreaming. He's nicer than Inuyasha, but in every other way just exactly the same. _

"Kagome... that's a nice name. So, who do I remind you of?"

She blushed a little deeper. "My first boyfriend," she half-lied.

He blinked. "No wonder you were staring. You had such a weird expression on your face, you had me worried there."

"Sorry."

"No problem." He paused, then sighed. "Hey."

"What?"

"You um... you wanna get a coffee? I don't have to work for a few hours yet, and I've got nothing to do until then. How about it?"

A million thoughts exploded in her head at once.

_Yes, please god yes!_

_But... am I only looking for Inuyasha in him? That's not really fair to him._

_Yesyesyesyesyes..._

_What if he turns out to be nothing like him? Can I survive that?_

_Yesyesyesyesyes..._

_Am I strong enough to give my heart again?_

_For chrissakes, get a hold of yourself, Kagome. It's just coffee, he's not asking you to marry him. You'll never be able to live with yourself if you don't do this."_

She decided.

"Yes, I'd like that," she said softly, and smiled at the man who wasn't the one she wanted, the one who would never come back.

"There's a place near here, Colossi's. You know where it is?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak anymore.

"Great. Meet you there in an hour?"

She nodded again, and smiled.

"See you there, Kagome."

VvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV

Over the next few months, Kagome and Akio went for coffee twenty-seven times.

They talked, and learned things about eachother, and she fell in love with him as though she'd always loved him, which in a way she had.

The eighteenth time, she told him about the well and her other life, and about a monk, a huntress, and a fox child that had loved her as a mother. He grew still and quiet. She held her breath and prayed he wouldn't think her crazy and leave.

He didn't. "I believe you," he said quietly. "It's crazy, but I believe you. I'm not sure why, I know deep down that you're telling the truth."

The twenty-third time, she told him about Inuyasha and what she'd felt for him, and about how he'd died.

Akio shuddered and reached across to grasp her hand. "No wonder you were staring, that first day. You must have thought you'd seen a ghost for _real._" She looked at his hand on the table and wondered for the four thousand five hundred and seventy-second time if perhaps, perhaps she could allow herself to let it happen.

The twenty-seventh time, she left her car at the coffee shop and they went out for dinner. Over Italian and fine wine, he formally asked her out. It seemed a formality they'd accidentally forgotten, instead of something of great importance.

The next time, they went to a movie, and he held her hand through all the scary parts.

The next time after that, they went to a festival and rode the Ferris Wheel, a Western delight she'd never seen before. She clung to him when it started to move, and even when she'd gotten over her fear she didn't let go. Later, he won a stuffed animal for her at a shooting game. His reflexes and coordination were achingly familiar, just like everything else about him.

VvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV

On the forty-third date, he stopped her as they walked along the riverbank. "Hey, do you believe in reincarnation?" he asked, sounding indifferent but badly hiding the anxiety beneath his voice.

"No," she said, and kissed him.

His lips were warm, and it took a while before she caught herself pretending they belonged to someone else. Then, she discovered that somehow she'd stopped needing them to be anyone else's-- and was so shaken she pulled away.

"What's wrong?" he asked, and she knew he was hurt.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I wasn't being fair to you."

He asked what she meant, but she didn't answer.

VvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV

He asked her about reincarnation again on the fifty-first date.

"I'm not sure," she said, this time. "Why do you ask?"

He leaned back, rocking his chair and staring at the ceiling. "Because, every day I'm more certain that I've known you before. The story of Inuyasha rings true with me, and sounds more familiar than it could or should if things were normal. Every day, I wonder a little bit more if, maybe the Buddhists have it right with their circle of death and rebirth, Sakura or whatever."

"Samsara," she corrected, thunderstruck. It _couldn't _be. Inuyasha was dead. Akio looked like him, and that was all. It _had _to be all. Because... if this was him...

"Whatever. I could be wrong. It's just a really weird feeling, is all. You've said yourself that I look like him."

"It's more than that," she said without thinking, and immediately wished she could swallow the words that hung between them on glistening, fragile threads.

"How so?" he asked softly, eyes sad and knowing.

Tears burned her eyes and she swallowed the lump in her throat. "You don't just _look _like him. You sound like him, you talk like him, you smile like him, even _scoff_ like him, and everything you do is what he might have done if he hadn't been scarred by Kikyou when he met me. It's so easy to forget, sometimes, that you're not actually him."

"So _that's _what you meant that other time."

"What?"

"That day on the riverbank. You said 'I'm not being fair to you.' I didn't get it, but now I do. You were pretending I was him, and were angry with yourself for it."

She lowered her head in shame and averted her eyes. "I'm so sorry. You deserve to have all of me, but I..."

"Kagome," he interrupted.

She looked up at him with tortured eyes.

"Shut up."

He took one look at her shocked expression and began to laugh. "God, you can be so thick sometimes."

"I don't understand."

"Kags, I'm not even sure that I'm _not _this Inuyasha guy. Half the time when you slip and call me by his name, I don't even notice. The name sounds right to some part of me. And the more we talk about these people you knew, the more I'm sure I know them."

She shook her head violently. "It's not possible, please stop. It only hurts more when you say things like that."

He was silent for a moment. Then he sighed, and when she met his eyes, they were deeper than before. Older. "You want me to prove it to you?"

"Akio, stop it! You can't! Inuyasha was Inuyasha, and you're you. Just please, let it go!"

He shook his head, almost angry now. Ferociously his eyes seized her and he began to rattle off in monotone the end of the world as she knew it. "Shippou liked green Skittles best. Sango knew how to play the flute. Sesshoumaru also has two stripes on his thighs, just like his wrists. I once stubbed my toe on your backpack in human form and swore so loudly you sat me for 'assaulting Shippou's virgin ears.' You used to practice with that stupid bow unti your fingers bled. Kikyo... Kikyo had a soft spot for the color blue."

Kagome forgot how to breathe.

"I told you, it sounded familiar when you told me. Since then, I've started to see pictures to match what you're saying, and then just recently... I started seeing things you hadn't told me yet. Kagome..."

She was weeping, now. He stopped talking and let her cry.

Then, he took her hand and drove her home.

"Inuyasha... I mean, Akio..."

"It doesn't matter. Call me whichever name you want. Just let me in, I'm not finished talking yet."

She opened the door and he stepped into her apartment. It occurred to her, when he looked around in a slightly lost manner, that he'd never been here before. He looked strange, standing in her kitchen like a memory done slightly wrong.

"Do you want a drink?"

"You got a beer?"

"Sure."

A few minutes later, they sat awkwardly on her tattered red couch and stared at eachother.

"This beer is actually pretty good."

"I'm glad."

Silence.

"Er..." they both started, simultaneously, and then laughed. The tension broke with an almost audible snap.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it gently with a smile on his face. "I can't believe you waited for me," he said, and she gasped.

Not 'him.'

_Me. _

"Akio... you just..."

He turned to look at her, deep blue eyes fathomless in the low light. "I told you, I remember. The line between him and me is pretty blurred, now. After all, he's sort of me. I guess. It's confusing, but what I mean to say is..."

She was crying again, helpless tears rolling down her cheeks.

"Oi, don't cry, Kagome! What I mean to say is... I remember you. And thanks for waiting."

"You're _late,_" she cried, and when she saw his expression deepen she broke completely and everything she'd forced herself not to feel flooded her. She felt completely without volition, her limbs blown about here and there by the force of what she'd dammed up.

Unable to stop herself, Kagome hurtled across the couch and into his arms.

"Oh, _Inuyasha,_" she whispered, finally giving herself permission now that all doubt was gone. "I missed you _so much_."

"Kagome," he said hoarsely, and then she kissed him.

There would be no pulling back, not this time. Akio _was_ Inuyasha, and Inuyasha was Akio, so there was no need to pretend, no need to hold back or feel shame. There was only him, just the one, and no more conflict to tear her apart.

"Inuyasha," she said one more time, just to hear the sound of his name and see the recognition in his eyes, and surrendered to his lips.

He ravished her mouth with all the frustrated desire of five hundred and ten years of waiting, tongue drinking her like a man dying of thirst. She returned his ardor shyly, unsure of what to do.

His arms circled around her, as though trying to pull her into himself and eliminate all separation. She ran her fingers through his hair and pulled out the tie so it spilled over her fingers, only inches shorter than her own. It had the same texture as she remembered, and for a while she just stroked the silky mass of it and let herself be happy.

"May I?" he asked after an endless span of time. It took her a long minute to figure out what he was talking about, lost in desire and halfway out of her head with bliss. His hands were on the straps of her tank top.

"Oh," she said when she remembered how to speak. "Yes, please." She lifted her arms and let him pull the flimsy blue fabric away from her. His fingers skated over her sides and she shivered, goosebumps rising to meet his fingertips. Instinctually, she reached for the buttons of his shirt.

It had all the reverent, worshipful air of ritual as they carefully disrobed eachother and stared in wonder at each newly exposed plane of flesh.

When he took her bra off, at last, he sucked in an audible breath and shuddered. "Beautiful," he murmured, half articulate, and buried his face between her breats while his hands continued their path of destruction among her garments.

"Ummmmm," she groaned, certain she was going to say something important but unable to remember what it might have been. "Ummmm, bedroom!"

"Nnnnggg?" Inuyasha/Akio answered.

"This way," she gasped, and tore herself away long enough to lead him towards her darkened bedroom. She had a king-size bed-- her one indulgence, though she had never shared it. He lifted her and launched the both of them into the middle of the vast creamy expanse.

She buried her face in the crook of his neck and inhaled, remembering many long journeys on his back. He smelled the same, though a little tainted by the smells of the modern world.

Impatiently he divested himself and her of the last impeding scraps of material and devoted himself to the worship of her. She could feel _it_, then, against her leg-- a few degrees warmer than the rest of him and hairy at the base. Involuntarily she stiffened a little, but forced herself to relax.

"Trust me," he whispered, and not waiting for her nod, slid lower, lower, lower until his face was enveloped in the softness of her thighs.

"Oh," she gulped, voice small and tight, as his tongue flickered against her just _there_. Nothing Kagome had ever done to herself in the dark of the night had ever felt quite that exquisite, and she writhed a little, helplessly. Her fingers tightened in the silky fabric of her duvet as she struggled not to move.

When he dipped his tongue into her, Kagome lost track of time and space and stared starry-eyed at the ceiling. There were noises escaping her throat, and she couldn't have stopped them if she'd wanted to.

It was a long, long time before he pulled himself up and away, sliding up her sweating body to rest between her breasts. After a moment, he started in on them, and Kagome gave up all attempts to stay quiet and groaned loudly. His tongue felt like fire on her swollen, aching tips. She knew her neighbours could hear them, now, and didn't care in the slightest.

"Inu-_yasha_," she hiccupped, short of breath and half-dead of rapture.

In answer, he hummed against her nipples and she gasped. "_Oh!_"

Long minutes later, he raised his head. "Kagome?"

"Yes, please!" she begged, nodding vigorously.

His face was covered with sweat from the effort of holding back, so she trailed her fingers across his damp forehead. He swept down and kissed her fiercely, trapping her fingers between them.

"I love you," he said when he pulled away. "I don't think I've ever said that before, in either life. Sorry for that."

"You don't have to apologize. I think I knew anyways. Inuyasha, Akio, whoever you are--I love you too."

And just like that, the overtaxed bonds that had been restraining him snapped and he fell on her like a predator on its prey. His hands, hot and demanding, were everywhere, and she couldn't breathe through his lips on hers.

Where before she'd felt desire, clear and teasing, now she was drowning in passion. Raging, redfire passion that would not be appeased. "_Please!_" she howled, dying of emptiness.

"It'll hurt," he warned, and positioned himself at the gateway to heaven.

"I don't care!"

Lowering his head, he bit her hard on the neck as he simultaneously hunched forwards, driving himself towards Paradise. She shrieked, but more at the pain on her neck than the one lower down. "That hurt!" she cried, rubbing her neck. He smiled.

"Oh. You did that on purpose."

"Kagome?"

"Hnnn?"

"Stop talking." His mouth swept down, tongue fiercely thrusting to compensate for holding everything below his neck completely still. He held himself that way, halfway sheathed in her and shaking rigidly, and waited for her to catch up.

The sharp pain faded into liquid aching after a while, and she sighed happily.

Cautiously, he pushed a little further in. She moaned at the sensation of the rougher skin of his shaft abrading her inner flesh. Reassured, he drew outwards and slowly pushed in again.

They both sucked in a breath, and locked eyes. Ocean grey-blue and the true, deeper blue of fathomless lakes. She nodded once, slowly, and with a cry of relief he lunged into her and began to thrust almost frantically.

Her eyes widened. She met his thrusts, once she learned the rhythm, and drew ragged, gasping breaths in time. Increasingly, she began to feel like an elastic stretched too far, splintering around the edges. Kagome dug her fingernails into the bunched muscles of Akio/Inuyasha's back and closed her eyes. Her legs came up of their own volition to wrap around his bucking hips.

He seized her mouth once again, wild with need, and this time her tongue fought back.

_Languid, fierce _

_liquid, rasping _

"Faster!" she cried, and he complied with a low, rumbling growl by redoubling his speed.

She wailed, long and agonized by the sharp edge of oblivion. "_Inuyasha!_" she howled.

"_Kagome!_"

He shifted a little, just so, and his hips slammed against the exact right spot. She shrieked and threw her head back, racked by waves of impossible rapture.

A split second later, he roared and collapsed on her, shaking and gasping.

"Is it... always like that?" she murmured in his ear, awed.

"I wouldn't know," he answered raggedly. "I waited for you, too."

"Oh."

He made as if to roll away, but she tightened her arms and legs around him and refused to let him move. The warmth of him atop her, the reassuring heavy strength, made her feel safer than she'd ever felt.

They fell asleep that way, naked on top of the ivory bedspread.

It had been a long, long time coming.

VvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvV

On the sixty-seventh date, he made her dinner and served her a ring along with the chocolate dessert.

Again, it was like a formality they'd almost forgotten while living.

"Sorry for messing up last time," he said. "I hope I've got it right, now."

"_Baka,_" she gasp-laughed. "Yes, of course I'll marry you. There's no Naraku, here, so you have no excuse this time for running away."

"Oi! That was a noble self-sacrifice, not running away!"

She smiled smugly as she slid the silver ring onto her finger and admired the heart-shaped diamond. "Whatever you say, Inuyasha."

"Wench! I did not _run away_!"

She looked slowly up at him, with an expression he had cause to remember.

"Er..."

"Inuyasha, darling," she said, cloyingly sweet.

"Kagome, I'm..."

"Sit."

**XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX**

Geep! My first lemon! Please don't crucify me! Let me know what you all thought of it, including tips since I now to write a few more for the other people I'm thanking. Also concrit on the rest of the story very very welcome. Pretty please!

**Thank you, Teirlana Draco. I hope you liked it.**


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